When The Fire Dies
Romona Maher
Manahatta
by Mary Kathryn Nagle
Off-Broadway
Highlights
105 mins Present Day Role(s) for Indigenous Actor(s) Unit Set/Multiple Settings Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes
Synopsis
A gripping journey from the fur trade of the 1600s to the stock trade of today, Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta tells the story of Jane Snake, a brilliant young Native American woman with a Stanford MBA.
Jane reconnects with her ancestral homeland, known as Manahatta, when she moves from her home with the Delaware Nation in Anadarko, Oklahoma to New York for a job at a major investment bank just before the financial crisis of 2008.
Jane’s struggle to reconcile her new life with the expectations and traditions of the family she left behind is powerfully interwoven with the heartbreaking history of how the Lenape were forced from their land.
Both old and new Manahatta converge in a brutal lesson about the dangers of living in a society where there’s no such thing as enough.
Press Reviews
"Relevant, ambitious... Mary Kathryn Nagle uses the long lens of history to compare and conflate notions of capital and ownership, language and Indigenous identity, ambition and deracination, money and manipulation."
— Datebook
"Sharply written... Manahatta dramatizes two pivotal, and shameful, moments in New York City history, occurring four centuries apart — the Dutch West India Company’s ‘purchase’ of the island of Manhattan from the Lenape Indians (who had no concept of land ownership), and the worldwide financial crisis of 2008."
— New York Theater
"Quietly moving... Nagle’s ambitious play has more to offer than just a history lesson... [an] intriguing, thought-provoking, and overall worthwhile play."
— Theatermania
"Focused on big themes... the play makes a final resonant point about displacement, kinship and home, powerfully illustrating that all the brute forces of rampant capitalism enacted upon the Lenape in the 17th century are still very much present today."
— Daily Beast
"Fascinating... provocative and fast-paced... The play’s nimble overlaps urge us to relive these pivotal moments in our nation’s history with at least some consideration of the Lenape’s perspective."
— New Haven Review
Characters
| Character |
|---|
| Toosh-Ki-Pa-Kwis-I / Debra |
| Mother / Bobbie |
| Se-Ket-Tu-May-Qua / Luke |
| Peter Minuit / Dick |
| Jakob / Joe |
| Jonas Michaelius / Michael |
| Le-Le-Wa'-You / Jane |
Videos
Manahatta – Public Theater Teaser
Publication
Manahatta is a play written by Mary Kathryn Nagle and published by Samuel French .
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Performance Rights
Available for Licensing
Amateur Only
Fee: Minimum Fee: $110 per performance
Restrictions: Major Markets Plus (US) / Standard Plus Add'l Postcodes (UK)
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